Morgan ran his hands down Boyd’s back and cupped his ass. “Ask me to stay?” he said. “Maybe I won’t be an asshole this time?”
“No,” Boyd said. He kissed Morgan and then stepped back. “I’m late. I should go. You still gonna be around this evening?”
“Where else am I going to go?” Morgan asked. “I’m not exactly free to up stakes just yet.”
Sometimes Boyd missed things. He always had. His brain just didn’t categorize things in the same way other people did. So he zoned out of calculus because there was a butterfly stuck in the window, or he went to the wrong restaurant for a date because he hadn’t actually listened to the whole conversation. Except at work, where the stakes were high enough to keep him focused, and with Morgan, who nearly clawed his way out of his own skin when he was locked in that interview room in Huntington.
It didn’t matter. Boyd was shit with money. He’d have pissed away the bail on something else—another couch he didn’t need, a car that would end up resold to Shay because Boyd liked his dad’s old pickup. Hell, he paid nearly five grand for a con artist to take Donna on a magical mystery tour of nearby scrublands. So he wouldn’t draw the line at fifteen grand for Morgan’s freedom.
But he didn’t say any of that, just like he hadn’t asked about Morgan’s scars. Some things you didn’t have a right to know, not until it was offered. Boyd had grown up with half his life pinned out like butterflies for people to gawk at. Morgan got that.
“Take me out, then,” he said instead. “Somewhere nice. We can call it a date this time.”
Morgan looked as though he knew there was something Boyd hadn’t said. He abided by the same “leave sleeping dogs” code and didn’t press him on it. The corner of his mouth tilted up in a cautious smile.
“In public?” he said. “People will talk.”
“Good.”
Morgan laughed, and Boyd took the opportunity to leave. He got halfway down the stairs and had to stop for a second. The sharp prickle of tears stung at the back of his eyes and throat and wet and salty in his nose.Shit.He paused on the steps and impatiently scrubbed his hand over his face.
It was stupid. Morgan hadn’t even left yet. But he would. Boyd took a deep breath, sniffed hard, and wiped his eyes on his sleeve.
At least this time he got to say goodbye.
IT WASthe wrong day to come back off suspension.
Boyd stripped the sheets off the narrow cots in the dorm, flipped the mattresses, and left the naked pillows in the puddle of sun in front of the window. He had no idea if it made any difference, but Harry insisted it made them fluff up. He was the boss.
It wasn’t filthy. The beds were changed and laundered once a week. But the sheets smelled like a half-dozen firefighters had slept restlessly in them, and odds were at least someone had hooked up during a shift. Not exactly how Boyd imagined his triumphant return, and the monotony of it gave his brain too much time to mope. He pulled a sports sock out of a pillowcase, grimaced, and tossed them both over with the sheets.
“Hey, Boyd,” Jessie said as he rattled up the concrete steps in his heavy boots. The cat they’d saved from the trailer fire—Chitlins—was perched on his shoulder. “You got a minute?”
“Sure.” Boyd picked up a sheet and tossed it across to him. Jessie fielded the cotton out of the air before it hit him in the face. The close call made Chitlins hiss, jump down from her perch, and shoot under one of the beds. “Pitch in.”
Jessie shook out the sheet. “I did it last week.” Despite his complaints, he flicked the sheet over the mattress and tucked in the edges at the bottom of the bed, tightly enough to pass Harry’s inspection, while Boyd did the top. As they worked, the cat, whiskers curled and ear tips still frilled and bald from the fire, slunk from under her bed and made her perch in the stack of pillows.
“Last night, after you left, I hit a few more clubs and ended up at the Bucks.” Jessie dropped a folded blue blanket at the bottom of the bed and moved on to the next one. The Bucks—or The Buckingham, if it was for the fire risk-assessment reports—was the closest thing to a gay bar that Cutter’s Gap had. At least it was after 1:00 p.m. Wednesday to Saturday. Between them, Boyd and Jessie stretched the sheet drum-tight over the stained mattress—it looked like blood, but Tom swore it was tomato juice—and folded the corners in with military precision. “Shay was there.”
Boyd stalled midtuck and had to pull the sheet out to start again. It wasn’t as though Shay was in the closet, but he wasn’t exactly out of it either. With their friendship still on hold, Boyd didn’t feel he had the standing to decide what side of that line Jessie was on. Technically he knew, but whether his failure to recognize Shay was real or not, Boyd didn’t know.
“It’s a free country,” he said. “And the beer’s cheap.”
Jessie sat down on the corner of the made bed, foot braced against the metal base, and dangled his hands between his knees. “I think he knows that,” he said. “He was drunk off his ass, Boyd, and trying to pick fights with people. The bouncers chucked him out in the end. I went out and called him a cab, but I got the feeling he didn’t plan to head home.”
After the things that were said during the fight the other day, Boyd wasn’t sure he should even care what Shay did or how he fucked up. But life was never that easy.
“Did he say anything about—”
Boyd hesitated as he realized just how many options he had to finish that sentence. The last few weeks hadn’t been easy for anyone, but Shay had more to deal with than most. He hadn’t just had to wrestle with whether his brother was back. He had to handle Donna’s fragile state and deal with the sour old gossip that had bubbled up out of the town’s subconscious like gas from a swamp. Every time Sammy’s case made it back into public consciousness, the first thing people started to speculate about was who’d done it—the brother, the teacher, the stranger passing through? Boyd realized with a pinch of guilt that this time he had mostly left Shay to wade through it alone.
“Anything?” he finished the question weakly.
“You mean about your weird thing with maybe Sammy Calloway?” Jessie asked.
“It’s not weird,” Boyd said stiffly.
Jessie raised his eyebrows and snorted. “It kinda is,” he said. “I mean, it’s not my place to judge, but the guy’s either a con artist or an eight-year-old. All things being equal, that’s pretty weird. Anyhow, Shay didn’t mention it to me, but things had already kicked off when I got there. I don’t know if it was about that, but….”
